APPENDIX

BLOODY SWEAT

The bloody sweat of our Lord mentioned in Saint Luke's Gospel (xxii., 44), has given rise to not a little discussion. The Greek text is:

The Vulgate has this text thus: "Et factus est sudor ejus sicut guttae sanguinis decurrentis in terram." The Douay version is: "And his sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground." The King James translation has it: "And his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." The Greek text and the Vulgate and Douay versions are the same, but in the King James translation the words, "as it were great" differ somewhat from the statement in Greek.

The belief in the Catholic Church is that our Lord literally sweat blood through His unbroken skin, and this sweat is commonly deemed miraculous. Those that deny the sweat was really blood have no ground whatever for their assertion, because apart from all miracle bloody sweat can be a purely natural occurrence.

Dr. J. H. Pooley, in The Popular Science Monthly (vol. 26, p. 357), has an article on this subject in which he reported 47 cases of bloody sweat through unbroken skin. He, however, is of the opinion that our Lord's sweat had no real blood in it. Whatever his reason may be for this assertion he carefully conceals it.